calcium question
 

Hi all,

I have a 77 gal with softies and LPS. The lps being: hammer, candy-cane, and frog-spawn.

Do I really have to worry about calcium if I plan on doing arount 20% water change every 4 weeks?

Also do I have to worry about supplementing with anything else?

I have owned a 10gal nano for 2 years, and that one went very nicely but the reason is I did a water change every week, and I really don't want to do that with my 77 gal!!!

thanks

fresh.

LPS do use calcium from the water, as does any coraline algae you have. You will likely need to add Ca, but only a test kit can confirm that.

I have to supplement my little 20gal and that is with weekly water changes.. so I would think in the end you'd probably have to add some kalk or get a calcium reactor going on.
Especialy once you start stocking up..

Hi Fresh,

I never had a Calcium problem when I had only a few LPS and softies, but as mentioned your best guage is a test kit. That's with bi-monthly water changes of between 5-10% each.

I now have a small variety of SPS and LPS (mostly in the form of SPS frags and 1 clam). I find that I supplement liquid calcium a couple of times each week and keep it at around 440-460 (60 gal tank). I do not run a Ca reactor, nor do I really believe that they are necessary for a softy tank, although I cannot wait until I have the budget for one now that I am adding more SPS :biggrin:

Good luck,

Rob

Ultimately your need to buffer your calcium or Alk will come from testing your water chemistry and determining your consumption.. and adjusting for it.

Fresh,
I use to have mostly LPS corals in my tank and Ca depletion didn't seem to be a problem until those corals became very large(over ten crowns per colony), then I started adding Kalk in the second week of the month to keep up with the loss. About a year ago I started to add SPS and now I would say that these corals make up 35% of my tank. Once I added a few SPS then things really started to change, now I'm lucky if I can keep my Ca at 380-390ppm.

Like Brad said above, the only true way to know is by testing. When I had just LPS I would test every second week of the month, now I test every single week :biggrin:

The funny thing is, in my tank I have about 80% softies, zoo's, mushrooms and some ricordia.. the rest is a few SPS and LPS.. yet I cannot keep up with the demand of calcium and Alk... Strange trends..

just for a FYI soffties use Ca also, just not as much.

Steve

I think it has to do with ammount of water volume too.

Re: calcium question
 

fresh,

I do weekly 15% water changes and other maintenance on a 28g, a 42g and a 72g, then test for Ca and alk and adust these levels in all three tanks. I go through a lot of RO/DI water and my back hurts after the water changes, but it's worth it in the long run.

28g has nitrate of 5 ppm, and the 42g's and 72g's nitrates are ~10 ppm, and that's with no sumps/refugiums and no skimmers. Use only mechanical filtration that's cleaned weekly.